This invention relates generally to transforming images, and more particularly to transforming images in the style of other images.
Style transfer recomposes content images in the style of one or more reference style images. For example, a photograph of a house can be recomposed into the unique style of artists such as Vincent van Gogh or Claude Monet. Specifically, a content image can be recomposed in the style of the reference image by applying image transformation models to the content image to generate a stylized image. The stylized image preserves high-level spatial features of the content image while incorporating stylistic features of the reference image, such as texture, color palette, length and curvature of brushstrokes, and the like. For example, a stylized image of the house in the style of “The Starry Night” of Vincent van Gogh may preserve the high-level structures of the house, such as the roof, exterior walls, and large windows, while incorporating the predominantly blue color palette and the distinct brushwork of the artist.
By using computer models, content images can be recast in a variety of different styles in a relatively short amount of time without the need for creating the stylized image from scratch. However, many computer models for style transfer introduce undesired artifacts in the stylized image due to high non-linearity of image transformation models.